Album: Last Wane Days

Artist: Neil Luck, Fiona Bevan, ARCO

Release Date:12 March 2012

Last Wane Days is the latest manifestation of Neil Luck’s Notebook project, setting the texts of the avant-garde American playwright and director, Richard Foreman. This two-act monodrama for voice, strings, piano, and guitar has been composed in collaboration with the acclaimed singer-songwriter Fiona Bevan, and is performed by the avant-garde string ensemble ARCO. Cast half in the form of a dislocated language tape, half as a subverted pop album, Last Wane Days is a pile-up of lush orchestrations, radio jingles, noise, sumptuous vocals, MIDI sounds, dream sequences, and deformed rock guitar solos. A head-on collision of the sublime and the ridiculous.

Composed and arranged by Neil Luck. Swoon on the Throne of Moans, and The Last Days of Decadence composed by Fiona Bevan. Most of the texts used in the recording are rearranged fragments from the notebooks of Richard ForemanThe Last Days of Decadence lyrics by Fiona Bevan. Swoon on the Throne of Moans lyrics by Richard Foreman, Fiona Bevan, and Gérard de Nerval
Recorded by Oli Whitworth and Richard Thomas
Mixed and edited by Oli Whitworth Produced by Oli Whitworth, Neil Luck, Fiona BevanCover artwork by Ayşegül Wilde

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Reviews:

A highly baroque oddity of outsider classical-pop… Initial hearing caused my beret to fly off my head in surprise, while my noggin teemed with soundbites like “Kate Bush meets Luciano Berio during a performance of The Living Theatre” (The Sound Projector)

Pavlovian jingles, schmaltz and avant-garde noise. This should be a recipe for postmodern cliché, but intelligent composing and focused performances from Bevan (voice) and the ARCO string ensemble pull it out of the bag. Bevan in particular can turn her voice on a dime. As co-composers, Luck and Bevan use sound and recurring motifs cleverly, so that the rampant dislocations achieve an unexpected coherence and continuity. Serious artistry. (The Rambler)